There has been a flurry of publishing recently analyzing Japanese corporations in the post-bubble economy and the extent to which change is or is not happening and why. While the literature continues to expresses diverse views on such time-honored themes as the role of the keiretsu and bureaucrats in guiding corporate behavior, the five books under review shed a great deal of light on the role of social capital and economic change in Japan. Although many popular commentators continue to lament Japan's seeming intransigence in the face of demographic, regional, and financial challenges, these titles present a more nuanced picture. They show that Japan's business model is absorbing some of the components of corporate governance preferred by U.S. shareholders, but slowly, very modestly, and to enhance, rather than overturn, the existing system. The reason, the authors find, is the overwhelming demands placed upon firms and managers to build and maintain...
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Book Review|
May 01 2009
Social Capital in Japan's Post-Bubble Economy - Accelerating Japan's Economic Growth: Resolving Japan's Growth Controversy and Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism and The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States and Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism and Changing Japanese Capitalism: Societal Coordination and Institutional Adjustment
Accelerating Japan's Economic Growth: Resolving Japan's Growth Controversy
. By F. Gerard Adams, Lawrence R. Klein, Yuzo Kumasaka, and Akihito Shinozaki. New York
: Routledge
, 2008
. xviii
, 182
pp. $150.00 (cloth).Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism
. By Marie Anchordoguy. Ithaca, N.Y.
: Cornell University Press
, 2005
. xii
, 257
pp. $41.95 (cloth).The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States
. By Sanford M. Jacoby. Princeton, N.J.
: Princeton University Press
, 2005
. xi
, 216
pp. $19.95 (paper).Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism
. By Steven K. Vogel. Ithaca, N.Y.
: Cornell University Press
, 2006
. 250 pp. $19.95 (paper).Changing Japanese Capitalism: Societal Coordination and Institutional Adjustment
. By Michael A. Witt, Cambridge
: Cambridge University Press
, 2006
. xiv
, 225
pp. $101.00 (cloth).Journal of Asian Studies (2009) 68 (2): 577–582.
Citation
Jeffrey W. Alexander; Social Capital in Japan's Post-Bubble Economy - Accelerating Japan's Economic Growth: Resolving Japan's Growth Controversy and Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism and The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States and Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism and Changing Japanese Capitalism: Societal Coordination and Institutional Adjustment. Journal of Asian Studies 1 May 2009; 68 (2): 577–582. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911809000722
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